The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert
The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert
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The Last American Man

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Narrator: Patricia Kalember

Abridged: 6 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 12/23/2009

Synopsis

An unforgettable look at a truly pioneering, but thoroughly modern, American hero.Finalist for the National Book Award 2002In this rousing examination of contemporary American male identity, acclaimed author and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert explores the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway. In 1977, at the age of seventeen, Conway left his family's comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains. For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he has trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature. To Gilbert, Conway's mythical character challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America; he is a symbol of much we feel how our men should be, but rarely are.

About Elizabeth Gilbert

If you have ever seen the movie Coyote Ugly, you have seen the adaptation of the article written by American author, Elizabeth Gilbert, for GQ Magazine, which described her experiences working as a bartender on the Lower East Side of New York City. Gilbert held many jobs after earning her degree in Political Science from New York University. All of her labor jobs gave her inspiration for her fictional books and magazine articles.

Elizabeth Gilbert had almost immediate success with her writing, but the pinnacle of success for her was her book Eat, Pray, Love, which was written after a very upsetting divorce and she took off on a healing adventure throughout the world. After her first book, which was a collection of short stories, Pilgrim, she was praised as a " young writer of incandescent talent". Eat, Pray, Love was translated into thirty languages, selling over 12 million copies. In 2010, Julia Robert's starred in a film adaptation of the movie.

Gilbert's latest books are Committed, The Signature of All Things, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, and City of Girls, about the NYC theater world of the 1940's. She lives in NYC, rural New Jersey, and anywhere else her adventures take her.

Reviews

Goodreads review by G (galen) on June 21, 2008

This was my introduction to Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a random meeting, a freak of fate. Walking into my local public library I saw this book on a shelf I was passing, and thought "What... there aren't any men in America anymore?" Intrigued, I picked it up, positive it was some take-back-the-country......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on January 28, 2008

Eustace Conway could teach us all a thing or two about how we should live on this earth. Unfortunately, all Elizabeth Gilbert wants to teach us is about his father issues and his relationships with women. There is almost no wilderness ethic to be had; the book reads like the diary of a 12-year-old g......more

Goodreads review by Brice on July 31, 2007

The Last American man is attempting to save our once great nation from its own greed and sloth by living in harmony with nature. Which obviously is not the exciting part of the book. Eustace Conway’s smaller and more successful journeys may be the exciting part of the book. What this guy has done in......more

Goodreads review by Donna on August 29, 2008

I picked up The Last American Man thinking I was going to read about some environmentalist guy livin' out in the woods to prove a point to the world. While that is basically what the book is about- the author outlines a very different kind of man than you would expect to be living life in the woods.......more

Goodreads review by John on September 21, 2012

Eustace Conway is a terribly fascinating and tremendously unique individual, exactly the sort of person that deserves a biography. Unfortunately, this is not the book he deserves. Too many biographers (which is to say, more than none) make the mistake that Elizabeth Gilbert makes here. She has troubl......more

Quotes

"The finest examination of American masculinity and wilderness since Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild." —Outside

"Wickedly well-written...Without compromising her obvious admiration, Ms. Gilbert presents a warts-and-all portrait of Mr. Conway and a sophisticated understanding of why those warts are only natural.... A vigorous, engaging book." —The New York Times Book Review

"Gilbert artfully taps into this unique life to create a fascinating, deeply thought-out and anthralling narrative." —Los Angeles Times

"A vivid, nuanced portrait of an endlessly complicated man." —San Francisco Chronicle

"The Last American Man relates the riveting story of Conway's odyssey from a child of affluent parents, to mountain man, to the owner of 1,000 acres of woods and fields in western North Carolina. Gilbert sees in Conway's life a parable for our time, a way of capturing how our culture is sapping us of all that is vital." —Chicago Tribune

"There are so many reasons to read this book. Read it for the portrait of a man who isn't divorced from the land below and the sky above. Read it to watch his youthful ambitions fade into tired gasps. Read it to see how Gilbert gets at her subject without ever stabbing him in the back." —Entertainment Weekly

"Conway is a character almost too goofd to believe...In Gilbert, he may have found the perfect writer to tell his story...from Conway's life, Gilbert takes off on delightful tangents about the nature of manhood, the appeal of utopian communities, the history of the frontier and the lingering myth of the frontiersman. The subject becomes much broader than one man's life. It's about what has been lost with progress, and what can be reclaimed." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"An important book, and well-wrought to boot...Gilbert just plain catches him: It is hard to imagine a deeper, more insightful portrait...her book is wise and knowing." —Men's Journal

Awards

  • National Book Award
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